Swedish grammar

Swedish is descended from Old Norse. Compared to its progenitor, Swedish grammar is much less characterized by inflection . Modern Swedish has two genders and no longer conjugates verbs based on person or number. Its nouns have lost the morphological distinction between nominative and accusative cases that denoted grammatical subject and object in Old Norse in favor of marking by word order. Swedish uses some inflection with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is generally a Subject Verb Object (SVO) language with V2 word order.

Nouns

Nouns have two grammatical genders: "common" ("utrum") and "neuter" ("neutrum"), which determine their definite forms as well as the form of any adjectives used to describe them. Noun gender is largely arbitrary and must be memorized; however, around three quarters of all Swedish nouns are common gender. Living beings are often common nouns, like in "en katt", "en häst", "en fluga", etc.

Swedish formerly had three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. Though traces of the three-gender system still exist in archaic expressions and certain dialects, masculine and feminine nouns have today merged into the common gender. Differences between masculine and feminine nouns are today only expressed in the singular definite form of adjectives, and to some extent in personal pronouns.

There are a small number of Swedish nouns that can be either common or neuter gender. The database for Svenska Akademiens Ordlista 12 contained 324 such nouns. [cite web
last = Källström
first = Roger
title = Omarkerat neutrum?
publisher = Göteborgs universitet
url = http://hum.gu.se/institutioner/svenska-spraket/personal/sverk/Markeringgenus.pdf
format = PDF
accessdate = 2008-03-26]

There are traces of the former four-case system for nouns evidenced in that pronouns still have a subject, object (based on the old dative form) and genitive forms. [Pettersson, 150-51] Nouns make no distinction between subject and object forms, and the genitive is formed by adding "-s" to the end of a word. This "-s" genitive functions more like a clitic than a proper case and is nearly identical to the possessive suffix used in English.

Swedish nouns are inflected for number and definiteness and can take a genitive suffix. They exhibit the following morpheme order:

Second declension: "-ar" (common gender)

Third declension: "-er", "-r" (mostly common gender nouns, some neuter nouns)

Words taking only -r as a marker for plural is regarded as a declension of its own by some scholars. However, traditionally these have been regarded as a special version of the third declension.

Fourth declension: -"n" (neuter) This is when a neuter noun ends in a vowel.

Fifth declension: unmarked plural (mostly neuter nouns that don't end in vowels and common gender nouns ending in certain derivation suffixes)

Pronouns

The Swedish pronoun system is almost identical to that of English. Pronouns inflect for person, number, and, in the third person singular, gender. Differences with English include the inclusion in Swedish of a reflexive pronoun "sig" for third-person reflexive, and the maintenance of distinct 2nd person singular, plural, and objective forms which have all merged to "you" in English, while the third person plurals are becoming merged in Swedish instead.

The Swedish pronouns are:

The numbers for multiples of ten from 20 to 1000 are:

Thus follows "kvintiljon", "kvintiljard", "sextiljon", "sextiljard", "septiljon", "septiljard", "oktiljon", "oktiljard", "noniljon", "noniljard" etc. The names of the cardinal number above "triljard" are somewhat disputed.

The cardinal numbers from "miljon" and larger are true nouns and take the "-er" suffix in the plural. They are separated in written Swedish from the preceding number.

Any number can be compounded by simply joining the relevant simple cardinal number in the same order as the digits are written. Written with digits, a number is separated with a space between each third digit from the right. The same principle is used when a number is written with letters, although this becomes less common the longer the number is. However, round numbers, like "tusen", "miljon" and "miljard" are often written with letters as are small numbers (below 20).

Rational numbers are read as the cardinal number of the numerator followed by the ordinal number of the denominator compounded with "-del" or "-delar" (part(s)). If the numerator is more than one, logically, the plural form of "del" is used. For those ordinal numbers that are three syllables or longer and end in "-de", that suffix is usually dropped in favour of the "de" in "-del". There are a few exceptions.

About 80% of all verbs in Swedish are group 1 verbs, which is the only productive verb group, i.e., all new verbs in Swedish are of this class.fact|date=December 2007 Swenglish variants of English verbs can be made by adding "-a" to the end of an English verb, sometimes with minor spelling changes. The verb is then treated as a group 1 verb. Examples of modern loan words within the IT field are "chatta" and "surfa". Swenglish variants from the IT field that may be used but are not considered Swedish include "maila" (to email or mail) and "savea" (to save).

The stem of a verb is based on the present tense of the verb. If the present tense ends in "-ar", the "-r" is removed to form the stem, e.g., "kallar" → "kalla-". If the present tense ends in "-er", the "-er" is removed, e.g., "stänger" → "stäng-". For short verbs, the "-r" is removed from the present tense of the verb, e.g., "syr" → "sy-". The imperative is the same as the stem.

For group 1 verbs, the stem ends in "-a", the infinitive is the same as the stem, the present tense ends in "-r", the past tense in "-de", the supine in "-t", and the past participle in "-d", "-t", and "de".

For group 2 verbs, the stem ends in a consonant, the infinitive ends in "-a", and the present tense in "-er". Group 2 verbs are further subdivided into group 2a and 2b. For group 2a verbs, the past tense ends in "-de" and the past participle in "-d", "-t", and "-da". For group 2b verbs, the past tense ends in "-te" and the past participle in "-t", "-t", and "-ta".

For group 3 verbs, the stem ends in a vowel that is not "-a", the infinitive is the same as the stem, the present tense ends in "-r", the past tense in "-dde", the supine in "-tt", and the past participle in "-dd", "-tt", and "-dda".

Group 4 verbs are strong and irregular verbs. Many commonly used verbs belong to this group. For strong verbs, the vowel changes for the past and often the supine, following a definite pattern, e.g., "stryka" is a strong verb that follows the "u"/"y", "ö", "u" pattern (see table below for conjugations). Irregular verbs, such as "vara" (to be), are completely irregular and follow no pattern. As of lately, an increasing number verbs formerly conjugated with a strong inflection has been subject to be conjugated with its weak equivalent form in colloquial speech.

Prepositions of time

yntax

Being a Germanic language, Swedish syntax shows similarities to both English and German. Like English, Swedish has a Subject Verb Object basic word order, but like German, utilizes verb-second word order in main clauses, for instance after adverbs, adverbial phrases and dependent clauses. Adjectives generally precede the noun they determine, though the reverse is not infrequent in poetry. Nouns qualifying other nouns are almost always compounded on the fly, (as with German, but less so with English), with the last noun being the head.

A general word-order template may be drawn for a Swedish sentence, where each part, if it does appear, appears in this order. (Source -- Swedish For Immigrants level 3).

Main Clause

Subordinate Clause

The "Fundament" is either an adverb, or adverbial phrase, that may be spatial, temporal, or clausal, or the subject.

Notes

References

*Holmes, Philip & Hinchliffe, Ian (1997) "Swedish: An Essential Grammar" Routledge: New York ISBN 0-415-16160-6
*Pettersson, Gertrud (1996) "Svenska språket under sjuhundra år: en historia om svenskan och dess utforskande" Lund: Studentlitteratur ISBN 91-44-48221-3